


Irresistible force paradox

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Getting Together, Humor, M/M, Meet the Family, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22009741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “So,” Stella says five minutes after Steve finally meets her. He’s been looking forward to this – she completes his collection of Williamses. Stella looks less excited and more suspicious. “You’re the man that turned our Danny gay.”Or: An immovable object (Steve and Danny’s obliviousness) vs. an unstoppable force (a yelling Stella Williams).
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 20
Kudos: 453





	Irresistible force paradox

**Author's Note:**

> I mentioned a few times on Tumblr that I was attempting to write Christmas fic, and I’m afraid this is still not it. I hope you’re all having some very happy holidays, regardless! ✨❄
> 
> The irresistible force paradox (also unstoppable force paradox or shield and spear paradox, according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_force_paradox)) is something most of you have probably heard of, but for those of you that don’t: it essentially boils down to, “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

All the Williamses Steve has met are a force of nature in one way or another. The very first thing he ever hears from Danny is yelling, and it never really stops after that. Grace is next; she’s eight and tiny and seems a tad shy when he shakes her hand in that rowdy football crowd, but the very next second that peels away and she’s boldly exposing her dad’s talking points to a group of virtual strangers. 

Eric seems like a younger, darker-haired version of Danny whose balance between common sense and bravado got knocked out of whack a little, Danny’s mom is a waterfall of words, Matt is a flash of lightning, Danny’s dad is an iceberg – quiet but with hidden depths, and he knows how to hold steady if you crash into him – and Bridget has more energy than should be contained inside of one adult. Charlie is a surprise, in that he seems very reserved and meek at first, but soon he’s leveraging that to beg extra cookies from Steve with his wide, innocent eyes, and Steve realizes that he’s made a tactical error in underestimating anyone with the surname Williams, even if that someone is four and has only gotten that name very recently.

All of which is to say that Steve has learned his lesson. He has extensive personal experience to draw on and he knows to expect almost anything.

Somehow, that still doesn’t accurately prepare him for Danny’s second sister. “So,” Stella says five minutes after Steve finally meets her. He’s been looking forward to this – she completes his collection of Williamses. Stella looks less excited and more suspicious. “You’re the man that turned our Danny gay.”

They’re on the road, ferrying Stella to Danny’s place after picking her up from the airport, and Steve is in the backseat for once. He’d been planning to complain about that next time he gets Danny to himself, but suddenly he’s almost thankful to Danny for putting his foot down when it came to driving his own sister in his own car. Steve is not entirely sure he wouldn’t have gotten into his very first human error induced car crash right about now.

Before he can find the strength to come up with a reply, Danny starts talking, loudly. “Jesus Christ, Stella. There’s this thing called subtlety. Ever heard of it?”

“Like you have,” Stella shoots back, just as loud, without a single beat in between. She reaches up from her position in the passenger seat and adjusts the rearview mirror so she can narrow her eyes at Steve through it. Steve feels strangely intimidated by this short, curly-haired blond woman who always looked so sweet in Eric’s pictures.

As soon as Stella lowers her hand, Danny yanks the mirror back to its original position. “Are you _trying_ to make me crash the car? Is that why you came to Hawaii?”

“I _came_ to _Hawaii_ to get a look at your _life_ here. Which I’m _trying_ to do right now, if you’d just _let_ me.” She emphasizes almost every other word and it should sound way sillier than it does. She reaches for the mirror again, but Danny is prepared this time and bats her hand away. “Ouch!”

Without taking his eyes off the road, Danny points a finger in her direction. “I knew I should’ve told you to take a taxi and figure it out. Steve, I warned you. This is all your fault.”

Steve is not very pleased to be drawn back into the conversation. He felt uniquely content trying to blend into the seats. “Hm,” he says. 

This time Stella turns her head to look at him, which is somehow worse than the mirror looks. “Steve, huh? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” he says, which is always a bad answer, because it’s invariably a lie. He got up this morning and fed Eddie and went for a run, and that’s only the top of a very long list of things he did, just today. ‘Nothing’ feels like a fitting answer to whatever Stella is getting at, though. “I suggested we pick you up from the airport ourselves.”

“A little personal touch,” Danny says, taking his turn finding Steve’s eyes in the rearview mirror. It doesn’t exactly stop Steve’s heart from racing, but he still likes this far, far better. It reminds him of a year into their friendship, being on the run from the police on false charges, with Danny having his back like he always does. 

He almost smiles about it, when the illusion of having any kind of private moment is broken by Stella, looking from him to Danny and back. “So Steve, when did you start sleeping with my brother?”

“Holy shit,” Danny says, with feeling.

“Is this a serious thing, or are you out to break his heart?”

“Please shut up.”

“DADT, that must’ve been hard for you, right?”

“Stella!”

“That’s kind of personal,” Steve tries.

It works, but only in part. “Fair enough,” Stella says, relenting, before coming right back with, “So is Danny any good at gay sex? Rachel always seemed very happy, but hey, you know, I imagine there’s a difference.”

It’s reached a point where Steve is forced to reconsider if he shouldn’t have bullied Danny into letting him drive after all, because there seems to be a very real and growing possibility that Danny might steer them into oncoming traffic intentionally just to get his sister to shut up. Steve wouldn’t even blame him. 

“We are not sleeping together!” Steve half blurts, half yells at her. Either way it’s loud, because anything less than that probably wouldn’t have stood a snowball’s chance in hell to get through. “I don’t know where you got all this, but we’re not. We’re just really not.”

“You’re not?”

Danny still looks like he’s going to explode, but ever so marginally less like it’s going to happen in the next five seconds. “I’ve been _telling_ you-” he starts, forcefully, before Stella interrupts him again.

“So why the hell not?”

“What?” Steve had just allowed himself to relax because the worst of it seemed over. He’s not fully caught up to what’s happening now. 

“Why aren’t you sleeping with my brother, Steven J. McGarrett?”

“How do you know my middle na-”

“What, he’s not _good enough_ for you? Why do you hate people from Jersey? Are you one of those macho military homophobes, huh? What’s _wrong_ with you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Danny says, or at least Steve thinks he does, because Stella is talking, and Danny is, and Steve is, too, trying to tell Stella, “Of course he’s good enough. Why would you-”

Danny slams on the horn. The deafening noise startles all three of them into silence, but that only lasts about a second before Stella is talking again. “Why do you hate him, huh? Huh?”

“I don’t hate him! I love your brother. He means the world to me. Would you please stop?”

Stella sits back in her seat. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay?” Steve repeats, warily. It can’t be this easy.

Stella seems to think differently, because she shrugs, like he’s making a big deal out of nothing. He really doesn’t think he’s the one doing that. “Okay.”

“I hate you so much,” Danny grumbles, which takes Steve aback for a moment – what did he even _do_? all he did was yell about how important Danny is to him – until he realizes it’s not aimed at him.

“No, you don’t,” Stella says, with a confidence Steve wouldn’t have been able to muster in her place. “You talk about him so much, you know I had to grill him.” 

“You couldn’t have at least waited until we’re home?”

“You know patience is not a Williams family trait.” Danny huffs and Steve is very careful not to make a sound, but it’s still possibly the first thing Stella has said that he can fully agree with. Even from behind, she looks like she knows that, and it becomes more obvious when she turns to look at him again. It’s a little scary just how much she seems to know, for a woman he’s never met before. “I’m a little sorry for coming on so strong, though,” she adds. “You seem like a good guy, Steve.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, not sure that that’s what he wants to say, but going with what’s left of his instinct to charm anyway. He’d usually offer a compliment in return, but he can’t think of something that wouldn’t sound passive-aggressive quickly enough.

There’s quiet for at least ten seconds then, until Danny turns on the radio. It’s some boppy pop station, but he doesn’t try to change the channel and Steve doesn’t complain. Stella seems miraculously content to accept the music, too, or maybe she just genuinely likes it – Steve doesn’t know her.

*

When they get to Danny’s house, Stella decides she’s ready for a nap after such a long flight to rebuild some energy before meeting Eric for dinner in a few hours. Danny encourages her in this idea so much that he almost ruins it and she threatens to want an immediate tour of the island anyway, but in the end her tiredness appears to win out over her instinct to annoy a sibling. She hugs Danny and then Steve, and while he’s politely hugging her back she whispers, “You mean the world to him too, you know.”

Steve’s too perplex to come up with a clever response. “I know,” he murmurs, because he does. Danny is one of the very few people in his life that he’s never had to wonder about.

Stella retires upstairs to Grace’s room, which she’ll inhabit for the next week, and Danny wordlessly looks at Steve, takes his arm and draws him into the kitchen. It’s furthest from the stairs and on the other side of the house from where Stella will be sleeping.

Once the door is shut behind them, Danny lets go of Steve and slumps against the kitchen counter. He rubs his forehead for a silent moment. “So, uh, that just happened.”

“Maybe it didn’t,” Steve offers. “Maybe we had a shared hallucination.”

“I’ve known Stella too long to delude myself with those kinds of hopeless hopes.”

Steve thinks about hopeless hopes and sisters who come in like a wrecking ball and feeling instantly safe when he retreats with Danny to an empty room. It’s not that there will never be another moment like this – there have been enough in their intense decade together, so there will probably be more – but is that really an excuse to postpone what he could be doing today? If Stella is at all right in everything she was unsubtly implying, she would have an actual reason to yell at Steve next time he sees her if he doesn’t open his mouth now. That would be bad enough.

But he also knows Danny loves him. He knows it might even run a little deeper than they’ve always pretended, and he knows that those feelings are most definitely mutual. He’s got them, too. It’s always been there between them, undeniable and yet exactly that, denied, over and over and over without ever really addressing the issue.

Steve wets his lips. For a paradox that spans nearly a quarter of his life, the way to unravel it is deceptively easy. “Hey Danny, do you want to, maybe-”

“No,” Danny says, very firmly.

Steve should feel hurt or disappointed, but he’s mainly confused. He hasn’t even asked a question yet. “Huh?”

“No,” Danny repeats. “Ask me again tomorrow. If we do this today, Stella will know, and I’ll have to listen to her gloat for the rest of my life about how a single conversation from her was what got us together.”

“The rest of your life?” Steve’s pretty sure Danny said other words, but he couldn’t tell you what any of them were. He feels a grin starting to build.

“What, did Stella not grill you enough about your intentions? Do I need to throw you back in?”

That’s a horrific thought. “God no. I’ll take getting stuck with you forever over that.”

“Good,” Danny says, because he seems to get that “you’re not the worst” in this particular context means something like “there is no one I would rather have”. It’s like when Danny tells Steve he hates him and Steve tells him he loves him, too. The words don’t mean what they should, but they mean what they need them to. “That’s settled then.”

“I guess so.”

Danny nods, and Steve nods a little as a reflex response, and their eyes lock. They’re close; a lot closer than Steve had realized. When Danny’s eyes wander down to Steve’s lips, it takes an impossible amount of willpower not to kiss Danny right then and there. 

Danny clears his throat. “Wanna stick around for a beer? Platonically, as totally friendly best friends?”

“Sure, yeah,” Steve says, maybe a little too quick. “Friends do that. That’s good.”

They have a beer, and they totally definitely do not give in to the siren’s call of that first kiss, and Stella’s smugness that night about the red mark on Danny’s neck is entirely misplaced because that was absolutely there before she went to bed. She might never believe them, but they will never let her know anything different.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! One of my New Year's resolutions is to get better at responding to comments again, because I do genuinely love and appreciate every single one, even if my side of the comment section has fallen very silent in the latter half of 2019. Here's to improvement on that in 2020! ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


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